Sleep

Sleep has a profound impact on our health. Are you are constantly tired, do you feel overwhelmed by stressful situations, and find yourself lacking in the strength and vitality that you used to enjoy? Do you struggle to get out of bed in the morning, even after a long sleep? I have developed an end to end sleep coaching package, and a range of resources that include podcasts, great videos and some downloadable hints and ideas that you can use as a gift from me to help optimise your Sleep and Life.

Nutrition

In the 1960’s well meaning researchers wanted to cure the population of heart disease, but they jumped in too fast, they sought fame and with passion they started experiments with an ingrained hypotheses, and when the results did not align they discarded those results and only used the data that supported their belief. They then gained positions on the most influential boards and government panels to influence the dietary guidelines. They jumped the gun, the notion that fat makes you fat, eating cholesterol raises your cholesterol are ingrained in our beliefs and seem logical and true. Read on to find out the truth.

Mindset

The idea that our minds can interfere and limit our performance is central to sports psychology. Finding the best mental zone when under pressure – whether that be training, racing or life requires removing mental distractions. The neuroscience behind this principle is that each neuron has a limited capacity for electronic signals, just like a processor in a computer. This means the brain can be flooded by internally generated, unhelpful signals, making it much harder to process external information. Read on to gain access to some of the things i have learnt from over 30 years of leadership and life experience.

Coaching Tools and Downloads

Articles

Your Ultimate Life Optimisation Guide (924 kb) – Your Ultimate Life Optimisation Guide is a 2 page guide that shares 4 big ideas that if you take them on and take action will change your life. The second page is a planning method to help you develop a compelling vision and meaning of life.

Your Ultimate Life Optimisation Guide 2 (340 kb) – Your Ultimate Life Optimisation Guide 2 is a 2 page guide that I developed for a client talk focusing on stress. It shares 3 big ideas that if you take them on and take action will change your life. The second page is a planning method to help you develop a compelling vision and meaning of life.

The Wheel of Life (128 kb) – The Wheel of Life is a visual snapshot of how you’re fairing overall in life and in individual areas. It is essentially a circle divided into segments, typically eight, which represent different life areas. The fact that it is visual is important, I find it tends to hit home a lot more for my clients compared to just reading numbers on a sheet. Download the document and instructions here and enjoy the process. You can also read the detailed blog with some real life experiences when I have used the tool with clients.

Sleep Resources

Articles

Light exposure at night – A growing body of research has shown that exposure to light at night causes a disruption of brain neuroendocrine systems including melatonin and cortisol rhythms. This hormonal dysregulation is associated with fatigue, loss of alertness, vigilance errors and reduced performance.

Sleep Coaching (282 kb) If you want to learn more about the sleep coaching program, download the PDF explaining the program and pricing.

Reclaim Your Sleep – We intuitively know that sleep is important. I think it’s one of the most important behavioral experiences you do in your life. If you sleep on average 7.5 hours a night by the time you’re 90 you would have slept for 32 years. If you want hints to improve you sleep check out my blog on sleep.

Podcasts

Do you make these sleep mistakes? – Sacrificing sleep because you think it’s a waste of time? Andre explains why getting the right amount of sleep is absolutely essential and how it can optimize your life and your business.

Escaping Sleep Deprivation – Andre on the importance of sleep and how it can effect your performance, effectiveness and decision making and how you can utilize technology to track your sleep and performance.

Videos

Russell Foster – Why do we sleep?

Russell Foster is a circadian neuroscientist: He studies the sleep cycles of the brain. And he asks: What do we know about sleep? Not a lot, it turns out, for something we do with one-third of our lives. In this talk, Foster shares three popular theories about why we sleep, busts some myths about how much sleep we need at different ages — and hints at some bold new uses of sleep as a predictor of mental health.

Positive Health and Wellness. Recently I was approached by a world leading health and wellness company Called “Positive Health and Wellness” to share some of my content and thoughts to ther readers. I have been following this community for quite a while and i get a lot of value from much of the articles posted. Check it out and I know you will learn a great deal.

Podcasts

Listen to this great Podcast on the KetoEndurance Podcast with Andre and Stephanie Holbrook from Fat to Fit on her Global Podcast that has over 16K downloads. A light hearted but important discussion about challenging long held beliefs about dietary dogma.

Listen to this podcast on the Sports Adventure podcast . A Focus on health and fitness for Middle Aged Men. Rod Bucton the host and Andre discuss sports performance, being overweight and challenging beliefs about the dietary guidelines and how changing the way we think about food and health can lead us to great things.

Listen to this great podcast on the Effortless Swimming podcast . Tabitha Jones is a client and friend of mine. I meet her at Brenton Fords Hell Camp Swim Week in Thailand. She’s take more than 20 seconds off per 100m over a half ironman distance swim. An impressive achievement in 8 months! Tabitha shares with us the things that have helped her do this from changes to technique, workouts, how she approaches races and the different attitude she takes towards her swimming. She talks a bit about the coaching I have provided her with in respect to losing a few kgs using my LCHF approach and also the mindset of racing.

Videos

Big Fat Lies

Big Fat Lies: A light hearted (pardon the pun) short 3 minute summary of the false science that lead to Ancel Keys becoming known as the father of the lipid hypothesis. Which is based on totally bogus science.

The Big Fat Surprise – Nina Teicholz at TEDxEast

Nina Teicholz is the author of the forthcoming book, The Big Fat Surprise (Simon & Schuster 2014), which makes the argument that modern nutrition science, over the past 60 years, has been wrong about dietary fat. She argues that eating fat is essential to good health, and that the saturated fats, as found in meat, cheese, cream and eggs, are the whole fats in whole foods that are essential for good heath.

Medical aspects of the low carbohydrate lifestyle – Prof. Tim Noakes

Professor Timothy Noakes (born 1949) is a South African professor of exercise and sports science at the University of Cape Town. He has run more than 70 marathons and ultramarathons and is the author of several books on exercise and diet.

Therapeutic Fasting

Dr Jason Fung is one of the worlds leading nephrologist. He is an amazing presenter and works with many people who are obese and diabetic. He is such an interesting presenter and a pleasure to listen to and learn from. His clinic runs programs on treating our generation’s great epidemic – metabolic syndrome. This is a spectrum of disease including obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, fatty liver, Alzheimer’s disease and cancer. Diabetes puts people further at risk for heart disease, stroke, peripheral vascular disease (PVD) including amputation, blindness, kidney disease and more.

Becoming known as one of the most outspoken cardiologists in Britain and a world leading expert in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of heart disease, Dr Aseem Malhotra is successfully leading the campaign against excess sugar consumption. The award-winning NHS cardiologist has successfully motivated leading academics, the media and politicians to make sugar reduction a health priority in the UK by publishing commentaries in the BMJ and mainstream media. Watch this fantastic interview.

Blood Tests to assess your Cardiovascular Risk

Ken talks about how most doctors are 30 years out of date. He explains what is important about your blood test results. A graduate of the University of Melbourne, Dr Sikaris trained at the Royal Melbourne, Queen Victoria, and Prince Henry’s Heidelberg Repatriation Hospitals. He obtained fellowships from the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia and the Australasian Association of Clinical Biochemists in 1992 and 1997 respectively.

Sugar and Fat Metabolism

Ken talks about the real issues with sugar and fructose, he also explains how we have not genetically evolved to be able to process all the fructose we eat. A very important video that you will watch over and over again when you understand the significance of this. A graduate of the University of Melbourne, Dr Sikaris trained at the Royal Melbourne, Queen Victoria, and Prince Henry’s Heidelberg Repatriation Hospitals. He obtained fellowships from the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia and the Australasian Association of Clinical Biochemists in 1992 and 1997 respectively.

Mindset Resources

Videos

Success tomorrow starts today

As a leadership coach and Endurance Coach, Andre talks about how we can all prepare for success tomorrow by planning the evening before. He shares some of his hints on how he prepares as a habit which reduces stress, allows him to hit his goals and allows him to Optimise performance, Optimise Health and Optimise his life.

Dynamic Powerful Self-Visualisation

If you can build a compelling vision of where you want to be in life and you can play that as a movie in your brain and really be there you can make some powerful things happen, not just in your marathon of life but in everything. Athletic performance, well the physical piece of it is one thing, but the whole mental and what I call “Dynamic Powerful Self-Visualisation” practise is the thing that makes the difference in Optimised performance. You don’t have to be an athlete to do this, making change happen requires a long term commitment, it requires internal motivation and different tools for different people. “Dynamic Powerful Self-Visualisation” is one I love using and has changed my life. It is a powerful tool.

The Incomplete Leader – Leadership

Andre was asked by Clark Morgan Corporate Training to talk about his experience on skills of great leaders. Great leaders acknowledge that they are incomplete, and in doing so, complement their weaknesses with their team around them. Andre’s leadership experience began in the Australian Army. Upon discharge, Andre began his corporate career with Cisco Systems, before moving to Samsung. Today, he splits his time between coaching leaders, athletes and racing. In this ClarkMorgan Insight, Andre highlights the four critical leadership capabilities of ‘sense-making’, ‘relating’, ‘visioning’ and ‘inventing’ – four capabilities needed by all organisations, big and small – and why no single leader should expect to be great in all areas.

Let your people make mistakes – Leadership

Andre was asked by Clark Morgan Corporate Training to talk about his experience on skills of great leaders. MISTAKES, NOT SUCCESS, ARE THE BETTER TEACHER. But while mistakes are a necessary hurdle in the development of a future leader, there needs to be support and acceptance of these mistakes along that journey. Listen to a real life story of how a young leader was mentored and provided trust to become a excellent leader.